Albrecht von Wallenstein – the general

Albrecht von Wallenstein was born on 24 September 1583 in Heřmanice, Bohemia which is the easternmost and largest region in what was then the Holy Roman Empire. He was a Bohemian military leader and an Imperial Count Palatine active during the Thirty Years‘ War. He became the supreme commander of the armies of the Habsburg Monarchy and was a major figure of the Thirty Years‘ War.

Wallenstein was born in Hermanitz an der Elbe into a poor protestant noble family. He acquired a multilingual university education across Europe and converted to Roman Catholicism in 1606. A marriage in 1609 to the wealthy widow of a Bohemian landowner gave Wallenstein access to considerable estates and wealth after her death at an early age in 1614.